Andrey Vassilitch Kovrin, who held a master's degree at the University,
had exhausted himself, and had upset his nerves. He did not send
for a doctor, but casually, over a bottle of wine, he spoke to a
friend who was a doctor, and the latter advised him to spend the
spring and summer in the country. Very opportunely a long letter
came from Tanya Pesotsky, who asked him to come and stay with them
at Borissovka. And he made up his mind that he really must go.

To begin with--that was in April--he went to his own home,
Kovrinka, and there spent three weeks in solitude; then, as soon
as the roads were in good condition, he set off, driving in a
carriage, to visit Pesotsky, his former guardian, who had brought
him up, and was a horticulturist well known all over Russia. The
distance from Kovrinka to Borissovka was reckoned only a little
over fifty miles. To drive along a soft road in May in a comfortable
carriage with springs was a real pleasure.

Pesotsky had an immense house with columns and lions, off which the
stucco was peeling, and with a footman in swallow-tails at the
entrance. The old park, laid out in the English style, gloomy and
severe, stretched for almost three-quarters of a mile to the river,
and there ended in a steep, precipitous clay bank, where pines grew
with bare roots that looked like shaggy paws; the water shone below
with an unfriendly gleam, and the peewits flew up with a plaintive
cry, and there one always felt that one must sit down and write a
ballad. But near the house itself, in the courtyard and orchard,
which together with the nurseries covered ninety acres, it was all
life and gaiety even in bad weather. Such marvellous roses, lilies,
camellias; such tulips of all possible shades, from glistening white
to sooty black--such a wealth of flowers, in fact, Kovrin had
never seen anywhere as at Pesotsky's. It was only the beginning of
spring, and the real glory of the flower-beds was still hidden away
in the hot-houses. But even the flowers along the avenues, and here
and there in the flower-beds, were enough to make one feel, as one
walked about the garden, as though one were in a realm of tender
colours, especially in the early morning when the dew was glistening
on every petal.

What was the decorative part of the garden, and what Pesotsky
contemptuously spoke of as rubbish, had at one time in his childhood
given Kovrin an impression of fairyland.

Every sort of caprice, of elaborate monstrosity and mockery at
Nature was here. There were espaliers of fruit-trees, a pear-tree
in the shape of a pyramidal poplar, spherical oaks and lime-trees,
an apple-tree in the shape of an umbrella, plum-trees trained into
arches, crests, candelabra, and even into the number 1862--the
year when Pesotsky first took up horticulture. One came across,
too, lovely, graceful trees with strong, straight stems like palms,
and it was only by looking intently that one could recognise these
trees as gooseberries or currants. But what made the garden most
cheerful and gave it a lively air, was the continual coming and
going in it, from early morning till evening; people with wheelbarrows,
shovels, and watering-cans swarmed round the trees and bushes, in
the avenues and the flower-beds, like ants. . . .

Kovrin arrived at Pesotsky's at ten o'clock in the evening. He found
Tanya and her father, Yegor Semyonitch, in great anxiety. The clear
starlight sky and the thermometer foretold a frost towards morning,
and meanwhile Ivan Karlovitch, the gardener, had gone to the town,
and they had no one to rely upon. At supper they talked of nothing
but the morning frost, and it was settled that Tanya should not go
to bed, and between twelve and one should walk through the garden,
and see that everything was done properly, and Yegor Semyonitch
should get up at three o'clock or even earlier.

Kovrin sat with Tanya all the evening, and after midnight went out
with her into the garden. It was cold. There was a strong smell of
burning already in the garden. In the big orchard, which was called
the commercial garden, and which brought Yegor Semyonitch several
thousand clear profit, a thick, black, acrid smoke was creeping
over the ground and, curling around the trees, was saving those
thousands from the frost. Here the trees were arranged as on a
chessboard, in straight and regular rows like ranks of soldiers,
and this severe pedantic regularity, and the fact that all the trees
were of the same size, and had tops and trunks all exactly alike,
made them look monotonous and even dreary. Kovrin and Tanya walked
along the rows where fires of dung, straw, and all sorts of refuse
were smouldering, and from time to time they were met by labourers
who wandered in the smoke like shadows. The only trees in flower
were the cherries, plums, and certain sorts of apples, but the whole
garden was plunged in smoke, and it was only near the nurseries
that Kovrin could breathe freely.

"Even as a child I used to sneeze from the smoke here," he said,
shrugging his shoulders, "but to this day I don't understand how
smoke can keep off frost."

"Smoke takes the place of clouds when there are none . . ." answered
Tanya.

He laughed and took her arm. Her broad, very earnest face, chilled
with the frost, with her delicate black eyebrows, the turned-up
collar of her coat, which prevented her moving her head freely, and
the whole of her thin, graceful figure, with her skirts tucked up
on account of the dew, touched him.

"Good heavens! she is grown up," he said. "When I went away from
here last, five years ago, you were still a child. You were such a
thin, longlegged creature, with your hair hanging on your shoulders;
you used to wear short frocks, and I used to tease you, calling you
a heron. . . . What time does!"

"Yes, five years!" sighed Tanya. "Much water has flowed since then.
Tell me, Andryusha, honestly," she began eagerly, looking him in
the face: "do you feel strange with us now? But why do I ask you?
You are a man, you live your own interesting life, you are somebody
. . . . To grow apart is so natural! But however that may be, Andryusha,
I want you to think of us as your people. We have a right to that."

"You were surprised this evening that we have so many of your
photographs. You know my father adores you. Sometimes it seems to
me that he loves you more than he does me. He is proud of you. You
are a clever, extraordinary man, you have made a brilliant career
for yourself, and he is persuaded that you have turned out like
this because he brought you up. I don't try to prevent him from
thinking so. Let him."

Dawn was already beginning, and that was especially perceptible
from the distinctness with which the coils of smoke and the tops
of the trees began to stand out in the air.

"It's time we were asleep, though," said Tanya, "and it's cold,
too." She took his arm. "Thank you for coming, Andryusha. We have
only uninteresting acquaintances, and not many of them. We have
only the garden, the garden, the garden, and nothing else. Standards,
half-standards," she laughed. "Aports, Reinettes, Borovinkas, budded
stocks, grafted stocks. . . . All, all our life has gone into the
garden. I never even dream of anything but apples and pears. Of
course, it is very nice and useful, but sometimes one longs for
something else for variety. I remember that when you used to come
to us for the summer holidays, or simply a visit, it always seemed
to be fresher and brighter in the house, as though the covers had
been taken off the lustres and the furniture. I was only a little
girl then, but yet I understood it."

She talked a long while and with great feeling. For some reason the
idea came into his head that in the course of the summer he might
grow fond of this little, weak, talkative creature, might be carried
away and fall in love; in their position it was so possible and
natural! This thought touched and amused him; he bent down to her
sweet, preoccupied face and hummed softly:

"'Onyegin, I won't conceal it;
I madly love Tatiana. . . .'"

By the time they reached the house, Yegor Semyonitch had got up.
Kovrin did not feel sleepy; he talked to the old man and went to
the garden with him. Yegor Semyonitch was a tall, broad-shouldered,
corpulent man, and he suffered from asthma, yet he walked so fast
that it was hard work to hurry after him. He had an extremely
preoccupied air; he was always hurrying somewhere, with an expression
that suggested that if he were one minute late all would be ruined!

"Here is a business, brother . . ." he began, standing still to
take breath. "On the surface of the ground, as you see, is frost;
but if you raise the thermometer on a stick fourteen feet above the
ground, there it is warm. . . . Why is that?"

But suddenly he listened, and, with a terrible face, ran off and
quickly disappeared behind the trees in a cloud of smoke.

"Who tied this horse to an apple-tree?" Kovrin heard his despairing,
heart-rending cry. "Who is the low scoundrel who has dared to tie
this horse to an apple-tree? My God, my God! They have ruined
everything; they have spoilt everything; they have done everything
filthy, horrible, and abominable. The orchard's done for, the
orchard's ruined. My God!"

"What is one to do with these accursed people?" he said in a tearful
voice, flinging up his hands. "Styopka was carting dung at night,
and tied the horse to an apple-tree! He twisted the reins round it,
the rascal, as tightly as he could, so that the bark is rubbed off
in three places. What do you think of that! I spoke to him and he
stands like a post and only blinks his eyes. Hanging is too good
for him."

Then, with the same rapid step and preoccupied face, he made the
round of the whole garden, and showed his former ward all his
greenhouses and hot-houses, his covered-in garden, and two apiaries
which he called the marvel of our century.

While they were walking the sun rose, flooding the garden with
brilliant light. It grew warm. Foreseeing a long, bright, cheerful
day, Kovrin recollected that it was only the beginning of May, and
that he had before him a whole summer as bright, cheerful, and long;
and suddenly there stirred in his bosom a joyous, youthful feeling,
such as he used to experience in his childhood, running about in
that garden. And he hugged the old man and kissed him affectionately.
Both of them, feeling touched, went indoors and drank tea out of
old-fashioned china cups, with cream and satisfying krendels made
with milk and eggs; and these trifles reminded Kovrin again of his
childhood and boyhood. The delightful present was blended with the
impressions of the past that stirred within him; there was a tightness
at his heart; yet he was happy.

He waited till Tanya was awake and had coffee with her, went for a
walk, then went to his room and sat down to work. He read attentively,
making notes, and from time to time raised his eyes to look out at
the open windows or at the fresh, still dewy flowers in the vases
on the table; and again he dropped his eyes to his book, and it
seemed to him as though every vein in his body was quivering and
fluttering with pleasure.